any
holy hymnographers of the Orthodox Church were inspired to write not only
the text of the hymns but also their melodies. As Photios Kontoglou explains
in the Epilogue, this is why liturgical texts
and their melodies have an absolute correspondence. In order to preserve
this correspondence, an effort has been made in this book to keep the
original melodies with minimal alteration. To this end, the translation
offered is one that preserves the original meter wherever possible and
when no violence is done to the meaning. This method of translating was
also employed by the missionary Saints Cyril and Methodius when they trans­lated
hymns into Slavonic. [1]

Another
technique used in these settings (primarily in the cherubic hymns, the
long communion hymns, and the "dynamis" of the Trisagion) to help preserve
the original melodies is word repetition. The ancient practice of repeating
words or parts of words in a hymn is employed when a word or syllable
is held for many notes. It is a technique employed primarily in compositions
containing lengthy, melismatic phrases, although it can also be found
in shorter pieces as well. Its purpose is to help those listening to
the hymn not to lose track of the words being chanted (something that
can happen when a certain syllable is extended at length). Occasionally
hymnographers use it merely to emphasize a certain word. It can be found
in compositions written by St. John Koukouzelis [2] in the fourteenth
century, St. Mark of Ephesus [3] in the fifteenth, Manuel Chrysaphes
the New [4] in the seventeenth, and Theodore "Phokaeus" [5] in the nineteenth.
All contemporary composers of Byzantine-style music in Greece continue
this tradition.

The
hymn texts have been translated into Elizabethan and Modern English.
Both translations are available since the purpose of this book is to
bring Byzantine music to people in a form they will use in their churches,
irrespective of their linguistic preferences. Due to space limitations,
certain Greek hymns already available in Western notation in other publications
have been omitted.

The
hymns in the liturgies section of this project (i.e., the upper row of five orange buttons) have been translated, transcribed, and arranged by
an Athonite hieromonk of our monastery, who learned the sacred art of
Byzantine music on the Holy Mountain in Greece. His secular education
included music studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Arizona State University, and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology,
and Greek and Byzantine studies at Harvard University.

The hymns in the remaining sections of this project,—which include the Vespers, Orthros, Menaion, Triodion, and Pentecostarion sections (i.e., the lower row of five orange buttons)—have been translated by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, Massachusetts. These texts are copyrighted and we have used them with their kind permission. We chose to use their translations of these texts because many people throughout the world hold their liturgical translations in high regard due to their precision, meter, and elegance.

[1] The theory that Sts. Cyril and Methodios translated hymns to
meter is supported by the philologist Roman Jakobson, the musicologist Milos
M. Velimirović, and the historian Dimitri Obolensky.